


A Man in Chaos

by samalander



Category: ST:AOS - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Big Bang Challenge, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Memories, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-07
Updated: 2011-11-07
Packaged: 2017-10-25 19:46:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/274062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samalander/pseuds/samalander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Jim left on what he swore was a "final mission", Leonard believed him. A year later, Jim still missing in action, Leonard is sent to find him. But what he finds isn't his partner, and the real challenge will be bringing him back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. January-August  2286

**Author's Note:**

> "I'm a study of a man in chaos in search of frenzy." - Oscar Levant
> 
> Please be sure to check out [](http://holmes221b.livejournal.com/profile)[**holmes221b**](http://holmes221b.livejournal.com/) 's art [here](http://h221b-art.livejournal.com/7144.html) and [](http://leighblack.livejournal.com/profile)[**leighblack**](http://leighblack.livejournal.com/)'s mix [here](http://leighblack.livejournal.com/1195013.html). I was so blessed to have such awesome collaborators!
> 
> All the thanks in the world goes to [](http://emmypenny.livejournal.com/profile)[**emmypenny**](http://emmypenny.livejournal.com/) and [](http://theoreticalpixy.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://theoreticalpixy.livejournal.com/)**theoreticalpixy** \- seriously, you two, without you I could never, _ever_ have done this. You are the best alpha/beta/gamma readers in the world, and the for the cheerleading you provide and the love and the ass kicking? I am eternally grateful.
> 
> To [](http://wyntreaurora.livejournal.com/profile)[**wyntreaurora**](http://wyntreaurora.livejournal.com/) , for being an awesome beta, and [](http://echoinautumn.livejournal.com/profile)[**echoinautumn**](http://echoinautumn.livejournal.com/) , [](http://rubynye.livejournal.com/profile)[**rubynye**](http://rubynye.livejournal.com/) , [](http://hsavinien.livejournal.com/profile)[**hsavinien**](http://hsavinien.livejournal.com/) , and [](http://skirmish-of-wit.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://skirmish-of-wit.livejournal.com/)**skirmish_of_wit** for the encouragement and support in the process.

  
**January 2286**   


Leonard still got up every morning, tied on his shoes and ran a comb through his hair. He still filled a water bottle, still grabbed a protein bar, and set out.

He still put one foot in front of the other, still stretched, still smiled at Madme Laurent at the end of the street. He still jogged through the streets of the city he and Jim settled in, still in awe after twenty years that a simple country doctor fit so well in Paris.

He missed Jim every day, the half of his heart Jim walked out with felt like a hole, but he still went on, because Jim was coming back, Jim would come back.

_"It's just one mission, I'll be back before you know it."_

Jim had to come back.

Leonard's mind wandered, but his feet were true. He jogged along the Seine, cobblestones rough under his shoes, the ruins of the Louvre rising over the buildings as he ran, the memorial to the Battle of the Eiffel Tower fading behind him. It was a beautiful city, his city, and it was just as broken as he was.

Leonard took a swig of water, too cold for his throat in the January chill, but it kept him awake, kept him present. He noticed the message waiting on his wrist unit, but opted to run instead of reading it. Running was peaceful in the pre-dawn city, the smell of coffee and baking just starting to float into the air.

He completed the run, down the left bank and through the Jardin des Plantes and back home again, stopping at the bakery on the corner of Rue Violet to buy a chocolate crêpe or three - it's what Jim loved to do when they ran that route, said he deserved a reward after such a long run. Leonard had been running the route for nearly a year now, alone. He didn't always stop for crepes, because he thought that even Jim would agree that some mornings are meant for other things - eggs and bagels and orange juice - but it was the day before Jim's birthday, and Leonard thought that maybe, just maybe, tradition would soothe the throb of missing his partner for another day.

Back home again, he showered and shaved and pulled on a suit that he hated but he wore it because it was what Serious Hospital Administrators wore and grabbed his white coat, pausing to look around the bedroom once before leaving it. Jim's side of the bed was neat and crisp, the way it should be. Leonard would admit, under duress, that there had been nights when he'd slept on that side, wishing a year of washing hadn't removed the smell of Jim from the linens. All of Jim's things were waiting for him - his shoes in the closet and his reading glasses (he forgot them when he left, he must have been bored to tears wherever he was) on the bathroom counter. More than a few times Joanna had told Leonard that it was all too sad - that he needed to do something in the house so it didn't seem like a memorial, a mausoleum. But when Jim left on that mission, he promised he'd come back. He swore. And Leonard believed him. So when Jim came back, when he was done being classified as Missing In Action, their house would still be standing, would still be a familiar oasis of _them_ inside their brick walls.

He grabbed his keys from the hook where they hung next to Jim's and started toward the door before he remembered the message he ignored on his run. Leonard toyed with the idea of letting it sit, of going to work and not worrying about whatever piece of trash someone was trying to sell him, but even as an old man (and he was an old man, he insisted) he'd never quite learned to control his curiosity on such things. Palming his keys, Leonard trudged back up the stairs to the living room and stepped to the house terminal, logging himself in swiftly before pulling up his messages with an impatient sigh.

He was glad he did, because for once an early morning message held weight for him. He skimmed past the newsfeeds he subscribed to, the medical journals and reports from the doctors he supervised. There, neatly at the most recent end of the stack, heavy like a stone, sat a message from one Fleet Admiral Christopher Pike.

Pike had been the one who came to Leonard, official PADD clutched in his hands, to deliver the news of Jim's disappearance.

_He dragged himself up the stairs of his porch, exhausted and still feeling the blood of his last patient caked under his nails. She hadn't made it, and Leonard just wanted to pour a glass of bourbon, collapse in his chair, and not feel anything._

_Chris Pike was waiting for him, sitting on the bench Jim had insisted on cluttering their meager stoop with, harshly backlit by the porch light._

_"Leonard--"_

_"Where's Jim?"_

_"Let's go inside."_

_Leonard had just stood there, feeling the blood and the color drain from his face. Jim had been gone for two months, and silent almost that long, but that was par for these sorts of missions. What wasn't par was your partner's boss and mentor showing up on your doorstep without notice._

_Leonard opened the door and ushered Pike in before him._

The communication requested Leonard's presence at the office of the President, and assured him that his colleagues at l'Université Médecine had already been informed of his absence. Not that it mattered; he might be chief of surgery at the school, but that the damn place seemed to run itself. He longed for the time his term would end, when he could go back to teaching, to saving lives. Leonard McCoy was many things, but an effective and happy administrator was certainly not one of them.

Sighing again, he grabbed Jim's jacket, which sat too tight around his shoulders, and shrugged it on. He wore it more for comfort than warmth - the weather was brisk, but not cold. The weather service scheduled snow on Christmas every year, but it was January 3, and more like early spring than the middle of winter.

It never failed to astound Leonard how much the city changed in the hour he took to get dressed and have coffee. The dim light of dawn slid into a sunrise and then morning, whispering across ancient cobblestones as it went, and transformed the fog and the mystery and the serenity of his city into something more vibrant, more _Jim_.

He missed Jim the most in the mornings, missed their kiss goodbye at the doorway before they headed in their separate directions. But it had been nearly a year, and the memory of his partner's lips felt more like a dream than anything else.

He hailed a flitter on the corner, and the driver regarded him critically when he asked for Rue de la Fédération. Leonard knew he didn't look like much of a soldier anymore, his hair gone long and his beard shaggy, but he had as much right as anyone to visit the President, and the cabbie could stuff it.

The ride was mercifully short, neither man feeling the need to expound on the weather or the traffic or the politics of the day, and Leonard put his thumb on the credit reader as he stepped out. He almost changed his mind, one foot on the curb, looking up at the rounded artifice of the austere building, but Leonard reminded himself that if he could submerge his hands in a man's chest and replace his heart, he could face Pike.

The Chief of Staff's office was on the fifth floor, so the guard at the desk called a clump of beefy redshirts to make sure Leonard found it okay and didn't touch anything. (They weren't redshirts anymore, not with the new uniforms. Those made everyone a redshirt, and Leonard was glad he never had to endure them; he looked better in blue, anyway.)

A tall redheaded man who looked like someone folded him into his desk chair guarded the door to Pike's office. One of the security officers nodded at him. "Cusack, this is Dr. McCoy, here to see Admiral Pike."

Cusack, and McCoy remembered the man as someone he'd met years before, nodded and typed something on his console.

"Thanks, Heston," he said, and smiled, the skin around his eyes crinkling like tissue paper. "We've got it from here."

Heston harrumphed, but nodded to his men, who turned their backs on Leonard and left the room, tin soldiers in a row playing war for a little boy general. As they filed out, Cusack smiled at Leonard. "The Admiral will be just a minute, sir. Can I get you anything? Coffee or tea?"

Leonard didn't correct the kid about his being a sir, and waved his hand at the offer. "I'm fine," he said, his voice gravely from disuse. He realized his mouth was dry. "But maybe some water? And do you know what this is about?"

Cusack shrugged, busying himself with a small fridge behind his desk. He handed Leonard the water bottle, a fleet ration because no one expected a civilian guest in this office, and motioned to one of the chairs that, though amply padded, looked like it would hurt to sit in.

It did hurt, almost immediately. The Federation had a knack for this sort of thing, things that should have been pleasant, things that should feel good, but just ended up hurting. He didn't think too hard on it, tried not to dwell on the implications of that idea held for Jim's mission. Instead he sipped his water and glared at the walls.

Pike still walked with a bit of a limp from the _Narada_ incident, but when he entered the room, all Leonard saw was how old the man looked, so much older than he did the year previous. Apparently something had been taking its toll on the Admiral, but he still smiled warmly at Leonard, instructed Cusack not to interrupt them, and herded the doctor into his office.

"Doctor McCoy," Pike said, taking Leonard's hand firmly.

Leonard frowned. "Chris."

"Thanks for coming, I know the notice was short-"

"Can we not?"

Pike raised an eyebrow, but didn't ask what Leonard meant; they're both men of action, and chit-chat hardly became either of them. "Alright," he said, and Leonard actually relaxed at the promise of forthrightness. "You're here for two reasons. First off, do you understand that it is Federation policy to call of search parties after six months, but in Jim's case, we have extended the deadline to a year?"

Leonard nodded. They had found the wreckage of Jim's shuttle, but no body, and some kind of forensic evidence that someone - at least one someone - had walked away from the wreck. So they had kept looking. But there was a month left until the deadline and Pike was calling Leonard in-

"Is he dead?"

Pike shook his head no, and Leonard felt muscles he hadn't known he had tensed relaxing just a little.

"Actually, I called you here because we found him. We found Jim."

Leonard felt his body re-clench; the room seemed to shrink. If they had found Jim, if they knew where he was, he should be in this room. He should be wrapping his stupid arms around his partner and kissing the last year out of his mind.

But it's just him, and Pike, and something is wrong. Something is so terribly wrong.

"Where?"

"I can't tell you," Pike said, sliding a PADD across the desk, "until you sign this."

Leonard glanced at it, and the words seemed to swim with emotion. "What is it?"

"A non-disclosure agreement, and -" Pike sighed heavily. "we're reactivating your commission."

"Excuse me?"

"There's this little-known, seldom-used, reserve activation clause, and you're being reactivated."

Leonard just stared. "You're _drafting_ me?"

A smile played across Pike's lips and Leonard bit down the impulse to smack the man who was, for all intents and purposes, his commanding officer again.

"We prefer to call it reactivation, but to each his own," Pike smirked and really, Leonard was going to hit him. "But Nogura says that if I want you on this mission, it has to be as an officer."

"There's a mission?"

Pike nodded and motioned to the PADD. "Sign that, and there will be. We know where Jim is, McCoy. And we need you to go and get him."

Leonard didn't think. He just scrawled his name across the signature line, pressed his thumb to the identity chip, and shoved the PADD back at the Admiral.

"Tell me," he grit out through clenched teeth, "Sir."

Pike smiled a sort of sage smile that makes Leonard long for the days when he would have felt good hitting the older man, those long fifteen seconds ago. It wasn't a cruel gesture, because Pike wasn't cruel, but it was somehow worse that he looked sympathetic.

"The _Sally Ride_ \- you know, Uhura's ship?"

Leonard nodded. He'd been decommissioned, not under a rock - he knew what ships his friends were on, especially if said friends were the ones out searching for his partner. But he just smiled and waited for Pike to move on.

"They've been on assignment in the Rous system - you know all this, I'm sure from the reports Spock thinks we don't know he's sending?"

Leonard nodded again, and again he waited.

"Okay." Pike took a deep breath and ran his hand through the shock of steel-gray hair that he hadn't begun to lose. (It was a constant thorn in Jim's side, that his hair was starting to thin and Pike's was not. He said it made him feel old.)

"Fine. Cutting through the bullshit," Pike said, "There's an anomalous lifesign in a hospital in the capital city of the province Jim's shuttle crashed in. The stuff these people build with messes with our sensors and we can't get to it to see if it's Jim, but the doctors in the facility have published a paper that describes, as near as we can tell, symptoms that would be consistent with the breakdown of the prostheses Jim was fitted with, as well as a case of species dysmorphia."

Leonard's head was swimming as he tried to reconcile this information, all at once. Jim was alive but hurt, Jim was alive, Jim needed medical care, and the thought that reached the crest of the wave, the one that bubbled out of his lips like the tide was, "I guess I need to shave my beard."

Pike stared. "McCoy?"

"I mean. You need me to-" he took a steadying breath. "I'm guessing I'm going undercover as a local doctor with surprisingly perfect credentials and shining references? To get Jim out, if it's Jim?"

Pike smiled, and this time there was no hint of sad pity, just relief and maybe a twinkle of joy in his eye, that Leonard was going to do this. Because Leonard was going to do it, and he was going to do it damn well. "Yes, exactly."

"Then I'll need to shave," Leonard said, and Pike actually laughed, because goddammit if this isn't going to work.

* * *

  
**March 2286**   


Six weeks after his meeting with Pike, Leonard started to feel the familiar itch of _Fleet_ under his skin.

He was back in classes because, it turned out, when Pike said they were reactivating him, he actually meant they were promoting him to Admiral and ruining his life. But Leonard should have expected that. He was sitting in on academy classes remotely, watching seminars on Leadership and Tactics and Undercover Operations. He knew it was good information, it would be useful in the upcoming weeks, but Leonard resented being made to feel like he was a cadet again. He went through the academy, he served his time, and he just wanted Jim back before another year slipped away from them.

He told Pike that, fuming and ranting in the older man's office, relatively sure that Cusack was listening at the door, taking notes to pass on to Boyce and Piper about McCoy's insolent and insubordinate behavior.

Leonard didn't much care.

When he was done dressing down Pike, angry over his treatment, over the delay, over the facts of the case and the state of the universe, Pike was still sitting impassively behind his desk, hands folded neatly in front of him. The man didn't even have the decency to look annoyed; just sad.

"Leonard," he said, and inwardly, McCoy cringed. "If you want to be treated like an officer, you're going to have to act like one, and not like a spoiled cadet. I know you want Jim back yesterday. I do, too. But unlike you, I'm not letting the anxiety compromise my mission and my duties. You need to tell me right this second if you can do this; if the strain is going to be too much, then we'll cut you loose and send another doctor. In part you got this assignment because you're the best man for it. In part you got it because we have hope that Jim will respond to seeing you - if this is even Jim.

"Your choice - and it is yours, Leonard, is to suck up the training and get through it to get to Jim, or drop out and let us send someone else. But you decide now and stop wasting my time."

Leonard hung his head. Pike was right, the fucking bastard, and he made McCoy feel like a heel without even raising his voice.

"I'll go," he said, and he hated himself a little for the outburst, but worse than that, so much worse, was that Pike wasn't even mad - just calm and sorry.

"I'll go what, McCoy?"

"I'll go, _Sir_ ," he said, trying to keep the contempt out of his voice and failing.

Pike shot him a stern look. "McCoy."

"When does the training end? When do I get to see Jim again?"

"You get to go," Pike told him, cold steel in his eyes, "when your instructors and I think you are ready and not a minute before."

Leonard stood still then, contemplating the merits and downfalls of telling Pike to go fuck himself. Instead, he straightened his back, clasped his hands behind him and stared forward, the old posture fitting McCoy like a glove someone else has been wearing. "Am I dismissed, Sir?" he asked, and Pike almost smiled.

"You are, Doctor," he said with a nod, and Leonard turned to leave. He half expected Pike to call him back for more, to be told he was a disappointment of an officer, but he was allowed to leave, head held high, and make his way outside. He paused outside, at the curb, and glanced up at the building where the business of the Federation was done. Pike stood in his window, his face too far up to be seen, but his posture is clear, somehow, speaking volumes of regret and sorrow and something not unlike hope.

"We're coming, Jim. I promise," Leonard said to no one, and then shook his head to clear it. There was no time for that kind of frivolous nonsense, not if he wanted it to be a true statement, so he hailed a flitter and gave the driver directions to the library as he climbed in. He had work to do, if they're going to get his partner back.

* * *

  
**August 2286**   


It took a week to reach Kythar from Earth, and Leonard spent the entire time worrying.

Pike pulled in all the favors he had, or so he claimed, to get McCoy passage on _Excelsior_ and the company of Chekov and Sulu on the journey. He was grateful, really, but McCoy would almost have preferred strangers. As it was, with three people who cared so much on one ship, the anxiety of his mission seemed to echo off the hull and mealtimes were sprinkled with all the what-ifs their three massive brains could come up with.

It may have passed the time, but Leonard found no solace in the chatter and the week was long.

His first impression of Kythar as a planet was favorable. The arid southern continent where Jim was seemed to be stained red and gold, the people tall and willowy and, against most odds, quite beautiful to the human eye.

McCoy was assuming the personality of Dr. Ossa, son of Darth'a, a neural specialist from the far North with a list of recommendations that shimmered and a CV that was impressive, but relatively untraceable. (It was an art, creating fake identities, and Leonard never stopped being impressed by the work some people did.) He had been modified to some extent; his skin and eyes tinted to aesthetic neutrals, and prosthetic cartilaginous ridges inserted under his skin near his eyes and mouth, as well as down his chest and arms and the back of his legs. He hated it, mostly because he looked in the mirror and was greeted by a strange face, but Leonard tried to keep Jim in mind; two days was bad, but eighteen of months of it could drive a man to the brink.

The hospital Jim was in was nice enough - the tech was outdated by Federation standards, but that was to be expected of a pre-warp (though on the cusp, that's why Jim was there in the first place, to assess them as a threat) society. McCoy had a tricorder stashed at his dwelling, but for the first day, the first time he got to see Jim in a year and a half, technology seemed wrong. Leonard wanted to use his hands and his eyes (and his mouth, but that would come so much later) to assess his partner, to see what had to be done before they could remove him safely. If he was as far gone as the published papers said, as agoraphobic and violent and prone to escape attempts as the doctors claimed, it might be a while before it would be safe to even broach the subject of leaving.

The nurse who was giving him the tour (and McCoy hated that he had already forgotten her name, but the words of this dialect felt so heavy on his tongue and their reliance on body language was so ingrained that he hoped his mama would forgive him this once) paused outside a room.

"This is the patient you came for, Doctor," she said, lifting a foot in a gesture of either respect or hunger, "Jamith."

McCoy nodded, and then cursed inwardly before raising his left shoulder - nodding here meant something else, but he would be dammed if he could remember what. "May I see him?"

"No," the nurse said - and her name started with an L, Liff or Lathe or something, "Jamith is very sensitive. He cannot meet new people in the afternoon."

McCoy didn't bother to ask why. "Then where may I observe him from?"

The nurse smiled and pressed her six fingers together at the tips, which Leonard would have to look up later. "There is a feed," she said. "Would you like to see it now?"

"Yes, and alone. I will need to concentrate."

The nurse lifted her shoulder in acknowledgement, turning on her heel to lead the way. They ended up in a small room that stank of some kind of sanitizer, which had been fitted with a simple monitor and a desk.

"Do you require anything, Doctor?" the nurse asked, as McCoy took his seat.

"No," he snapped, his eyes fixed to the screen. She didn't deserve to be spoken to that way, Leonard knew, but on the monitor in front of him, his hair long and wild and beard untrimmed was Jim, his body thin and twisted where the prosthetics, designed to be worn for no more than six months, had begun to break down. He must have been in too much pain to bear, Leonard knew, and yet there he was, fucking alive and beautiful and _Jim_. There was a table in the room, scattered with paper and pens and what Leonard thought must be the equivalent of crayons, so Jim had some entertainment, but now he was simply sitting with his knees pulled to his chest, back to the wall, staring blankly into space like nothing Leonard had ever seen a healthy person do.

The nurse stepped from the room, letting the door close behind her, and Leonard thought that the clicking sound the door made might as well be the breaking of his heart.

Jim was looking into the camera now, up at it from the bed he sat on. His eyes were as blue as the day they met on the shuttle, like clear sky between clouds on a sunny day, but there was no life in them, no spark and no trace of the person who might have once been James Kirk.

This was bad, much worse than Leonard had anticipated. Jim, if he was still in there at all, was a long way away.

He stared at the display for a long time; long enough that he lost count of the minutes, and, when his stomach growled to remind him of nutrition, his heart and mind heavy, Leonard turned off the display and went to find the nurse again, to get directions to his office. There was a lot to do, and Jim didn't have time for Leonard to waste.


	2. September-October 2286

  
**September 2286**   


Soldier and protector of the Provence of Thandum, Jamith son of Gargund and Wincalle, had been confined for nearly two summers when the new healer appeared at his bedside. He was weary of this place, the asylum, and the people within it. He felt conspicuous in his strangeness, even among these outcasts of society- missing fingers on each hand made even simple tasks difficult for him, so that he had to ask for assistance for things that should be second nature. He envied the others, their dark red complexions more attractive than his pale pink one, their bodies lithe and ready, their voices sure and tongues fleet in the mother language, the things Jamith tripped over like an infant would.

Jamith no longer entertained the delusions he had when he first came to the asylum. He no longer believed in the worlds he created, "Earth" and "Starfleet." He no longer believed in a 2-meter tall male with heavy brows and dark hair and a smile as beautiful as it was rare. They'd cured him of those delusions, and for that Jamith was thankful. But there were times, rare times that grew further apart as he got better, when he still remembered that life, that fantasy, and thought that he could smell something, a waft of cologne, spicy and warm.

It always faded.

The staff talked, from time to time, about getting Jamith to leave the hospital. They would offer to take him outside when he was having "good" days, but Jamith had been outside, had seen the sky and the moons and it scared him, because the going there always let to pain. In lieu of that privilege, he was given access to paper and pens, to draw and write what he liked.

He didn't though, didn't dare write unless he couldn't stop himself; he knew the doctors and nurses read the things he wrote. He looked in his file once, just the once, and saw a sheet of paper with his own scrawling handwriting across it, a single phrase repeated over and over and over. "I AM JAMES T KIRK." The paper scared Jamith now, as much as it had upset him when he saw it. He recognized the name, of course, it was the alien he believed to be inhabiting his body. What scared Jamith more than anything else was that he had no memory of writing those words. He already couldn't trust his mind to tell him the truth and if he was losing his memory, too, then soon enough there would be nothing left.

The healer who came to his bedside, the new doctor, called himself Ossa. It's not a name Jamith had ever heard before, but he sometimes marveled at how dumb he was in his own culture. It was why the other patients didn't like him, he thought, because for a group of people who cannot live in the present, the past is a constant companion, and Jamith couldn't talk about his childhood; the one he remembered took place somewhere he made up (and he hated his imagination for the things it conjured, the miles of flat nothing and the dead father and the absent mother) with references that were totally alien to the things he must have seen.

The people the doctors called his parents (and Jamith believed them, had to believe them, because if he didn't then he was indulging the lies again) seemed kind; they weren't alive anymore, but there were enough records on file, things that were on his person when he was found, that Jamith could pretend that he knew them. He can imagine morning meals with his father cooking spice cakes and his mother checking his schoolwork. He could vaguely remember playing with other kids, games about the stars and planets, but he wondered, from time to time, if that was a real memory or a delusion.

He wondered that a lot.

Ossa reminded Jamith of someone, like an echo or a ghost. He wondered if it was his father, if that was what the smell of cologne really was, but he didn't ask, didn't dare to wonder if this man was really familiar, of if it was just his stupid mind playing stupid tricks.

The man was kind; of that Jamith was sure. He'd never met a doctor so kind, never known anyone with such soft hands and such a soothing voice. Ossa never looked at Jamith like the others did, the ones who thought he was dangerous.

(And he was dangerous, he knew that, standing on tables and screaming about the Federation. He hurt people then, before the tablets and the injections and the joints that throbbed and ached, he broke someone's arm in an hysterical rage about being the man who never existed.)

Ossa must have known all of this, must have known all the truths of Jamith's illness and proclivities and the little bugs that nested along his scapular ridges. But he didn't seem like he pitied Jamith, he never talked to him like he was dangerous.

"How are you feeling today?"

Jamith smiled up at Ossa, whose dark eyes shined with a familiar something. (And they were so much more attractive than Jamith's blue ones. The nurses said they were a proper purple-brown when he came, they were actually deep and attractive, and somehow over the first six months of his time in the hospital, they had faded to a sickly blue. Jamith had never seen another Kythar  
with blue eyes. It's how people knew he was Wrong with just a glance.)

"Well," he said, rather than give a dissertation on eye color.

"We have to talk," Ossa said, and Jamith didn't laugh, but he thought about it. Ossa loved to talk, loved to hear about Jamith's life, his every moment.

"What shall we talk about today?" Jamith asked, "Shoes or ships or sealing wax?"

Ossa, bless him, didn't write that phrase in his notes like the other doctors would have. He didn't even bat an eye at it, like saying insane things was just something he was used to. (He worked in an asylum, Jamith reminded himself, of course he was used to crazy.) Instead he nodded and said, "Are those my only choices?"

"No, there are also... something about kings. I can't remember. Am I making this up?"

Ossa looked stricken for a moment, before he schooled his features back into his impassible Doctor Mask. "It's not from around here," he said, "so maybe you did."

"But you didn't come to talk about that."

"No," he said, and Jamith realized for the first time that Ossa was still standing on the other side of his table, the table where Jamith had been drawing. Today he was drawing a white whale - a creature he made up himself, he thought, being chased across a black sea.

"Would you like to sit?"

Ossa nodded and took the chair opposite Jamith. "What are you drawing?" he asked.

"A dream I had," Jamith said. "Where a man in a boat chases a very big white fish."

"And why does he do that?"

Jamith shrugged. "We all have to chase something, I suppose."

"And what are you chasing?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Jamith asked, and Ossa shook his head before raising his hand, palm up, and then turning it over. It's a gesture Jamith learned here, in the hospital, shorthand for "tell me more" that the doctors used. So Jamith turned over the paper he'd been drawing on and sketched himself, arms outstretched, reaching for what should be a brain, but looked more like a plate of clinically depressed noodles. His hand ached from the simple act of clutching the stain pens, but something was driving him on, something made him want Ossa to understand, to _see_ him clearly.

"Your mind?"

"Isn't that what everyone here is chasing?" Jamith asked, and then he smiled sadly. "Everyone like me, anyway. I don't know what you're chasing."

He hoped it was an invitation; that it was something Ossa would take and open up for. He was a kind man, but a guarded one. Jamith had no idea of the man beyond his brilliantly butter-yellow coat and his sad, deep eyes. But Ossa didn't rise to the bait, just shook his head

"You know you're doing well," he said softly, "and Nurse Latt says you might like to take a walk. Would you like to go outside tomorrow?"

Jamith considered the offer. Plenty of nurses and doctors had asked him before, but he had the distinct feeling that Ossa was asking to go with him alone, and it made the bugs under Jamith's skin crawl.

"Who else will come?" he said, and tried to think of anything besides the burning nerves he would not scratch at.

"I thought just us," Ossa said, and Jamith wondered why all the air had suddenly escaped the room.

"No," Jamith said. "I don't want to go outside."

Ossa didn't look hurt, not really, because that wouldn't be the appropriate thing for a doctor to look. "Is there somewhere you'd rather go?" he asked, and Jamith thought for a moment about shoving his drawing pen up the man's nose and into his brain.

"No," he half-growled, and a year ago he would have tipped the table over and screamed what he thought was his name and a string of numbers until someone sedated him. But he was better now, better in this place, and he could be calm in the face of a man who wanted things from him.

"Would you go with Nurse Latt?" Ossa asked, and Jamith resented the implication.

He made a gesture of hostility and fear. "Why do you want me to go outside?"

"Why do you not want to go outside?"

"I asked first," Jamith snapped, and he felt that plume of anger curl in his belly, warm and tight and terrifying. He expected he'd have his dosages upped, that Ossa would cluck and write little notes about _emotional outbursts_ but the man just considered Jamith's statement for a moment before nodding.

"I suppose you did," he said, his voice maddeningly measured. "I want you to get out of the hospital is all. I think you're doing better, you're doing very well, and I want to see you walk free. The first step for that is going outside, just for a few minutes."

This time Jamith did scream, he did tip over the table, and he was struggling through the throb in his bones, trying to stab Ossa with his pen when his guard grabbed him by the elbows and held him back, containing his flailing limbs until the prick of the sedative needle set Jamith's mind toward sleep.

The last thing he saw before his eyes closed was Ossa's face, tears welling in the perfect dark eyes. He didn't have time to think on it or make sense of it before the drug took him down to the dreamless place where Jamith spent so much of his time.

* * *

  
**October 2286**   


McCoy hated the stupid planet - he hated the tandem moons, the bluish sun, the red people moving between clay buildings. He hated the heat of the days and the cold of the evenings. He hated the food, the barely edible slop that made a replicator look like a gourmet chef.

And he hated watching Jim struggle against his own mind.

People had asked Leonard, over the years, for the why-and-how of his and Jim's relationship. He never thought it was anyone's damn business, but the truth that he whispered to Jim in the dark of night was that, while those blue eyes drew him in, it was Jim's soaring intelligence and his fiery passion that held him fast.

So if Leonard hated the people of Kythar for what they'd done to Jim (and it wasn't even their fault, they did what they could. Jim had gone to observe their technology and verify rumors of a warlike people preparing to slash their way into post-warp society. It wasn't true, the rumor that they were violent and cruel was unfounded.) well, he tried to leave it out of his reports.

Some of his contempt seeped through, of course, because he was Leonard McCoy and he had never been exactly proficient in keeping his emotions and opinions in check.

In the second month of the mission, when Leonard was starting to feel the fissures opening under his facade, the frustration of Jim-but-not-Jim's reluctance to trust him threatening to overwhelm everything, he sent a report back to Pike in which every other word was fuck.

Nyota commed him the next day.

It was an interesting choice, having Uhura be the mediator. Pike and McCoy were friends of a sort, but they were both too worried about Jim, too emotionally invested in the mission to discuss it on even footing. (And if they were better men or worse officers, both would have recused themselves from the whole procedure, but neither man could see a single colleague who would do the things for Jim that they were willing to do.)

Uhura didn't smile the way Pike did, didn't veil her pity in pretty words. She was a master of words, a virtuoso of communication, and she had a way of showing you she understood just by the tilt of her head or the position of her hand on her cheek.

Uhura let him rant when she called, listened to McCoy's angry howls about the system on Kythar and the damage it did to the people who weren't Jim; the lack of some drugs that would save lives was enough of a subject that Leonard didn't even notice the sun moving across the sky as he spoke.

Finally, his lungs tired and his throat sore, having railed against the government, the moons, and the Hippocratic oath, Leonard slumped back in his chair and waited for Uhura to say something in return.

She stared at him, her black-brown eyes somehow deep and piercing at the same time. After a minute or two of just looking, she finally broke the silence.

"You've been ranting for forty-five minutes," she said, "most of that without taking a breath. But you know what you haven't done in that time?"

He shrugged. "Told you I like the haircut? Because short suits you."

Bless her heart, Uhura laughed. "No, jackass. You haven't mentioned Jim. So I'm thinking he's what's really wrong."

McCoy took a deep breath. "I can't- He doesn't trust me. Or Ossa, if we want to play the game where we're not the same person. Sometimes, it's like he's still Jim. He sits with his legs crossed at the knee and looks at me like he knows me. And I'm getting more of that. But there are still those awful times, the worst times, when he asks the security guards - and he always has guards on him - if I'm real."

Nyota nodded slowly. "So it's not that he doesn't trust you, Len. It's that he doesn't trust himself."

"I don't know how to fix that."

"Then don't fix it. Not now. Now you get him out of there, you get him back to Earth and back to Paris and back to the home you _know_ he still remembers. And then worry about the trust."

Leonard stared, dumbfounded, for a moment. "Jim told me once, a long time- right, he told me, he said, the day he drove his father's car into a quarry, he jumped out of it at the last moment and almost didn't make it. He said that he realized, because he did catch himself, because he didn't fall, he knew that maybe no one else would, but he'd always be there for himself. Even if it was just by his fingertips, he'd get a grip."

"So you know what you have to do."

"Push him off a cliff?"

Nyota rolled her eyes. "Yes, Len, or hold a phaser to his head and ask how lucky he feels."

"I have to make him see it again, I have to get him to not trust this place over himself."

She nodded. "And you know we'll be there - me and Spock and Scotty and Pavel and Hikaru - anytime you need us?"

"I know."

"Go bring our boy home."

Leonard smiled. "How is it you always make me feel twenty pounds lighter?"

"I'm just fantastic is all," she laughed, smiling back. "Call if you need me."

"Always. Thanks Nyota."

Leonard severed the connection, feeling the sunshine on his face for the first time in weeks. She was right. If Jim didn't want to leave the hospital, maybe it was time to change tactics.

* * *

The hospital was dark, which made sense, it being night and all. Both the moons had set, and the stars shown faintly between the bars on the windows, little more than lightning bugs in the inky morass outside the hospital.

Leonard missed Earth on nights like this, missed Georgia. He loved Paris and the home he and Jim made together, but a little part of him would always remember camping on lake Tobesofkee with his father, the clear summer sky free of the light pollution that would later become the norm. He knew Jim had similar memories, nights with Sam when they didn't want to deal with home, nights when the Kirk brothers would sneak out and lie in the fields, counting the stars until they fell asleep.

The first thing Leonard was going to do, when he got his Jim back, he was going to take them both camping somewhere quiet and private with the Milky Way painted above their heads, purple and white and blue, a split in the sky. Leonard will point up at the godforsaken star they're orbiting now and whisper how he loves Jim, how he needs him, how he'll always find him, no matter how far.

But for the time being reality was the hospital on Kythar, trying to keep his boots quiet on the vinyl flooring as he made his way down the hallway.

Leonard felt uneasy with what he was about to do. His three months on the planet, working with what was left of Jim's mind made him wonder, perhaps indulgently, if stealing him away was the right thing to do. The prime directive, as he understood it, was about non-interference and allowing people to choose their own destiny, and yet here he was, a newly minted Admiral, preparing to kidnap a man who had no interest in leaving the hospital, let alone the planet, and planning to make him into the man McCoy and the Fleet wanted him to be.

It felt wrong, and yet there he was, his left hand on the knob of Jim's room as his right keyed in his access code.

The door swung inward, casting a column of light into the room. Leonard thought it should fall across Jim's face, illuminate his golden hair and remind him of how in love they were when they were younger. It didn't, instead the light landed across the foot of Jim's bed.

Leonard steeled himself to step into the room - breathing deeply and trying to do things the way Jim would, with confidence and definition - when, from down the hall, a voice called his name.

"Ossa?"

He turned to the voice, hating the name he chose more and more with each passing day. It was meant to jar Jim's memory, help him recover himself. Leonard hadn't been counting on his partner being so far gone that he wouldn't recognize the Latin word for "bones."

The voice belonged to Nurse Latt, the person in the hospital who had the closest thing to a relationship with Jim. She smiled at Leonard, blinking her eyes rapidly, the common sign of emotional distress in the Kytharn.

"Latt," he said, inclining his head to the side and touching two fingers to his bared neck in greeting. She echoed the gesture, drawing close on her silent feet. He envied her stealth.

"Checking on Jamith?"

"I am," he said, forgetting the affirmative motion he was supposed to use. Even after three months, it didn't come naturally to Leonard, and body language was so important to these people, it got messy if you touched the wrong ridge or ran your fingers through your hair. His coworkers saw Leonard as stoic, if only because he erred on the side of caution, choosing to remain still instead of giving the wrong signals. He blinked, as she had done before. "I worry for him."

Her motion of sorrow was sincere. "I worry too," she said, "but now he sleeps."

Leonard used a finger to rapidly trace his right eyebrow in impatience. "I see that he sleeps. I need to check his blood pressure - Thykaa had to sedate him again today, it is why he has no guard."

Latt lifted her left shoulder - _that_ was affirmative. Of course the human gesture for feeling unsure was Kytharn for yes, that was the kind of frustrating fucking place this was. "I was here to do the same thing. You may leave if you wish," she said, leaving her mouth open at the end of the sentence in what Leonard was pretty sure was deference to authority, or maybe indigestion.

"I will do it," he said, and she raised her shoulder again, pressing the blood pressure meter she held into his hands.

"You will need this, then," she told him, and he cursed his luck. Of course Latt would notice, and of course she would be the one to find him there.

"That will be all, Latt," he said, making the impatience gesture again. She regarded him sharply for a moment, blinking like a heartbeat, before turning on her heel without so much as the gesture of good health that was the customary goodbye. If Leonard had any intention of seeing Latt again, he would have been worried. As it was, he would have Jim out of the hospital in under ten minutes, barely long enough for her to convince herself that something was wrong.

In some ways, Leonard regretted that. Latt was sharp in a way he hadn't often seen. Hell, she was the only one of her goddamned people he could remotely stand and he had, on occasion, thought about bringing her back with them, to be a nurse in Starfleet. She would be as good as Christine was, once she was trained, and Christine was the best nurse he had ever worked with, even if she had lost her damn senses and become a doctor. But it was a dream, for so many reasons, and so he stepped into Jim's room, the door clicking shut behind him.

The drugs the Kytharn used were simple by Starfleet's standards; they used a Phenothiazine derivative to sedate Jim and manage his so-called delusions. Leonard paused at Jim's bed, Latt's pressure cuff clutched in his hands, and took a moment to just look.

He hadn't seen Jim sleeping, not really. He'd seen him sedated and laid out, but there was a calmness to Jim when he slept, an evenness that Leonard had missed. It was all he could do not to smooth down Jim's hair and kiss his forehead.

Instead he pulled the hypo from his pocket - it was loaded with a stimulant and tracers, so if Jim tried to run (and he wouldn't, his legs were a little unsteady these days from the degrading prosthetics) Leonard would still be able to call _Excelsior_ and get them both back. Standing over his partner, hypo at the ready, Leonard briefly flashed back to the first time he saw Jim sedated, that first mission on _Enterprise_ , racing off to save Vulcan. These past months hadn't been too different - the unsureness, the fear, the adrenalin of trying to find Jim inside the mess the Kytharn had made. Leonard never really thought, on that first mission that they would fail, but he supposed age had changed him; all he had done on this goddamned mission was think about the ways it could go wrong.

Even now, end in sight, he stood worried about the next few minutes, using the peridoxycine without triggering an allergic reaction, getting out without being caught by Latt or upsetting Jim, having his molecules rearranged... it all seemed too big to Leonard, all of a sudden, too much.

So he took a deep breath and pressed the hypo to Jim's neck. The familiar hiss was deafening in the small room, making the hairs on the back of Leonard's neck stand up straight. He counted to ten, as slowly as he dared, and on 9, one of Jim's eyes flicked open.

"Ossa?" he asked, sleep and drugs and strange language clogging his voice.

"Hello, Jamith," Leonard smiled, extending a hand. He was sure the Kytharn had a meaning for it, the right hand, held with the palm up, but he was counting on Jim to recognize the gesture with his human brain, the instinct that was so ingrained in him.

It worked, Jim reached out and laid his hand on Leonard's, allowing himself to be pulled to his feet.

"I was just dreaming about you," Jim muttered. "Dreaming about a spaceship, and stars and something about you."

"Was it a nice dream?" Leonard handed Jim a pair of pants, which he pulled on mindlessly. McCoy had seen Jim naked a few times since he had arrived, in examinations, but he felt like he was seeing his partner for the first time, how his ribs were starting to show and the prosthetics were causing uneven lumps under his skin. It made him want to scream, maybe, or cry, but he swallowed the lump in his throat and handed Jim the dark hooded sweatshirt he had brought.

"I think so," Jim said, pulling on the shirt and smiling at Leonard. He seemed more awake, like the process of dressing had roused him, but there was still a dreaminess about him. "What hour is it?"

"After moonset," Leonard said, and if the way he used the Kytharn language was stilted, people tended to chalk it up to regional differences and education, rather than his non-native tongue.. "I thought that it might be easier for you to step outside in the darkness." Getting Jim outside was a critical part of the plan. They couldn't beam him out because of the mineral content of the walls, or something else that Leonard didn't understand, but once they were in the open air, the transporter could take them. He was supposed to avoid being seen by locals, if possible, but Leonard cared less about how they will explain the mysterious light and disappearance and more about getting Jim the fuck back to Earth.

Jim studied Leonard for a long moment, and McCoy held his breath, afraid that any sudden movement might set Kirk off, as he had so often in the past. Finally, after an eternity of the question heavy in the air, Jim raised his shoulder in affirmation, and Leonard gulped oxygen in relief.

McCoy lead the way, using his code to open the doors as they got further and further from the secure ward where Jim was kept. His brain wanted him to move slowly, hugging walls and shadows and corners, but all the training Pike insisted on came in handy for once, and Leonard fought his instinct down, letting Jim follow as they strode purposefully through the evening-dim halls. Well, Leonard strode, and he fought down the urge not to help Jim, who was slower, and favoring his right leg.

By some grace, and Leonard has no idea what he'd done to deserve it, they don't meet Latt on her rounds. He knew she would stop him; not because she was intent of keeping Jim prisoner, though sometimes McCoy thought that was the purpose of this place, but because she was smart and genuinely cared for her patients and she would know that this was a bullshit exercise.

The walk still seemed to take forever, the halls extending to the horizon and each footstep echoing like an avalanche. It was only a six minute walk, Leonard had timed it, but he still felt a flood of relief and joy when he saw the front desk, mercifully staffed by a nurse who Leonard long ago decided was not the brightest star in the sky.

"Ossa," she greeted him, and he bared his neck to her as he had to Latt earlier.

"Hello, Parchint," he said, as she repeated his gesture. "I am taking Jamith outside for three minutes."

"You will need to sign this," she said, pointing to the patient-guest roster, and he did, marking the symbols that made up both their borrowed names in the appropriate places.

"We will be back shortly," he told her, and she cupped her hands, holding them forward in the gesture of farewell. He spared a moment to imagine Uhura's voice, explaining why the gestures were the way they were, and the excitement she got from it, the passion in her eyes as she had demonstrated this one. Apparently the cupped hands were regional and were meant to represent how a man drank water from the stream - in this arid area, it was a blessing to say something like ‘may the path ahead be full of water.' Leonard knew he remembered it imperfectly, but that wasn't the point now. Now the point was getting Jim to take those seven steps to the outside, and then fifteen around the corner to beam up.

He turned to study Jim, who was blinking in distress at the doors to the outside.

"Are you prepared?" Leonard asked, and Jim looked down at his feet.

"No, Ossa," he said, "I do not think I can do this."

Leonard smiled sadly. So it would come to this - kidnap or cajole. "Will you step up to the doors for me?" he asked, and Jim turned to study his face for a long moment.

"I think I dreamed about you before we met," Jim said, and took a step forward. "I had dreams about a man of your size, but pale like me. He was not called Ossa," Jim took another small step, and Leonard turned to look at the nurse behind the desk, who didn't even have the grace to pretend not to stare.

"Please get him some tharn nectar," Leonard told her softly, knowing the sweet drink was a favorite among the nurses for its elevated caffeine content. He figured she would stop to get some herself, and leave them in peace for the precious few minutes he needed. She scrambled to comply, and when she had left, Leoanrd turned back to Jim. "Tell me more about your dream man," he said, urging another step forward.

Jim took the step. "I think I was in love with him, and I think he loved me back," Jim's voice was stronger, and his next step more sure. "And sometimes when you look at me, Ossa, I think you must have dreamed the same dreams."

Leonard swallowed. "I did," he whispered, and they took a fifth step. "It is why I came, I dreamed about a green-walled home on a far away planet and a tall man with light hair who needed me. I dreamed that I would meet him and he would want to get better if he was sick," one more step, and the automatic doors swished open, letting the breeze buffet their faces.

"I want to get better," Jim said, and took the last step into the night air, turning to look at Leonard. "And I want you to help me."

"I will," Leonard said. "Do you trust me?"

Jim raised his shoulder and slipped his hand into Leonard's. McCoy thought, in that moment, that it was all going to be okay, that Jim was better and they could go home. They took a few tentative steps toward the secluded beam-out site when suddenly, overhead, one of the large insectoids that filled the air at night made its buzzing call. Jim stiffened, and Leonard tightened his grip. There was no time to lose.

Barely thinking, Leonard grabbed for the communicator in his pocket. The moment of distraction allowed Jim to wrench his hand back, his eyes wide with panic. "Why have you brought me here?" he demanded, glaring daggers at Leonard. "What are you holding?"

Leonard made a grab for Jim's arm, but missed as Jim turned to race back to the safety of the hospital. In a decision he would never be able to explain later, Leonard grabbed the flapping hood of Jim's sweatshirt and, as the other man tried to wrench himself free of the grip, of the outside, Leonard screamed into his communicator.

" _Excelsior_! Now!"

He had never before felt comforted by the feeling of his atoms falling apart, but the relief was not long-lived. As soon as he opened his eyes on the pad back on the ship, McCoy felt a solid fist impact his cheekbone, and he went down, dazed.

* * *

Leonard woke in a panic, his heart hammering in his chest. He'd been dreaming of bodies, of severed limbs, of trying to make a functioning whole out of not enough pieces. The dark of the room felt different from his rooms on Kythar; there was no light from the window, no singing of the harymant beetle. Just darkness and the pounding of his blood in his ears. As he relaxed, the faint thrum of engines floated up to his ears, and he remembered, like a bolt, that he was back on _Excelsior_ , with Jim. With what was left of Jim.

"Computer," he called, "lights fifty percent."

The room slid into focus, the framed picture he had brought with him was perched on the dresser grinning back at him like a mockery- Joanna and Jim, laughing in the Georgia sunlight. It felt like a lifetime ago that Joanna was that young, but longer since she and Jim had both been that happy. He turned his head and sat up, rubbing his face where Jim hit him. He thought he would have a rather impressive bruise later; if there's one thing Jim was known for, it was hitting like a kiloton hammer. Apparently a year and a half of malnourishment and wasting away hadn't taken his adrenalin rush from him, or his ability to act in it.

"Computer, location of James Kirk."

"Admiral Kirk is in sickbay isolation room V," the computer replied, the same soothing female voice it had always been. Leonard dimly wondered who she was, the computer voice, and what she did when she wasn't a computer voice.

He raised his shoulder to the computer before remembering himself and smiling. He could stop that, now, he could nod his head and wave his hands and not worry about the implications, because he knew them like breathing. He was still fully dressed, he noted, and assumed that Chekov must have had him put back here after Jim hit him, to recoup.

He moved to his terminal, logging in and pulling up CMO Ochoa's report on Jim. Apparently Leonard had been asleep for long enough for Ochoa to remove the prosthetics and repair most of the damage. Leonard winced as he scanned the list. Jim wouldn't be regaining the full range of motion in his shoulders, and he would have arthritis in most of his upper body for the rest of his life. His legs were better off - a bit of necrotic tissue associated with the prosthetics had been excised, but modern tech meant that it would only be days before Jim was back on his feet, not weeks or years, and for that Leonard was thankful The arthritis was more worrisome; the pain would be managed but still, Leonard's memories of vivacious, bouncing Jim seemed to get further and further from him as he read the report.

There wasn't much in the way of psych, not yet. McCoy assumed this had more to do with Jim being unable or unwilling to speak than any failure on the part of the medical staff. Leonard briefly considered going down there, to see Jim or maybe just to see if Jim will even look at him, but he thought he knew the answer already.

So instead he decided to order a cup of tea and write to Joanna. His part of the mission was over; he'd gotten Jim out, he'd performed the tasks assigned to the best of his ability. It didn't feel great and he wasn't pleased with the whole situation, but once they got back to Earth and Jim was in the hands of the people who knew what they were doing, it would only be a matter of time before things could be normal again.

Leonard stared at the blank page of his letter, the blinking cursor exactly as frustrating as always, trying to figure out what to tell Joanna. She was an adult now, not his little girl, and at thirty-seven years old she was a successful and happy doctor in Proxima. They didn't always have the happiest of relationships or the easiest, but Leonard loved her more than anything else he'd ever known, and she had accepted Jim as a parental figure with grace and ease that had astounded all of them at the time, and she had been there for her father when Jim had disappeared. If anyone did, Joanna deserved to know what was happening.

Leonard just wasn't sure he knew what to tell her.

He was still staring hopelessly when his comm sounded. "McCoy," he offered, flipping it open.

"Doctor," Sulu's warm voice flooded over the connection. "Glad to have you back in consciousness."

"Glad to be back," Leonard offered with a smile Sulu couldn't see. "That man can still punch, huh?"

"Apparently. Will you join me and Pavel for supper?"

Leonard moved to lift his shoulder in the affirmative, but caught himself before the gesture was complete and nodded instead, glancing at the chronometer on his desk. "I would be honored. 1900?"

"We'll see you there. Sulu out."

Leonard wasn't sure how he had forgotten how soothing, how calming Sulu could be. He had somehow let it slide from his mind, and that seemed like a damn crime. He had allotted half an hour to get ready, so he closed the empty letter without saving, and moved to take a shower.

It didn't matter. Jim was back, and Leonard would be holding him close soon enough.

* * *

Leonard only saw Jim once on the ship, when he stopped into sickbay to have his prosthetics and his skin and eye pigmentation removed.

He was pleasantly surprised to see that Jim hadn't been strapped down; rather he was sitting calmly on a biobed, talking to a doctor whose name was something like Patel. He was embarrassed to admit it, but he did try to eavesdrop just a little, to get some idea of what was going on in Jim's head. He knew better, as a doctor and a person, to infringe on someone's confidentiality like that, but Leonard had never been an especially patient man, and he wouldn't have been a doctor if he could contain his curiosity.

McCoy didn't end up hearing any of Jim and the other doctor's conversation, because when Jim caught sight of him, he stiffened and his eyes went wide.

There was a bit of Kytharn body language in his reaction; the elevated blinking and the way Jim rubbed the place on his hand where his sixth finger should be. Leonard had to stop himself from whispering in Patel's ear, pointing out the signs of distress Jim had learned to display.

Instead Jim leaned into Patel and made a motion, and Leonard figured his identity was being obtained by the scared man who used to be his partner. He didn't let himself feel his heart skip at that thought, at the idea that even here, even surrounded by the things Jim believed in and fought for, they were strangers.

He heard his name spoken, "Doctor McCoy," but it wasn't Patel's soft alto that said it. Rather it was Dr. Ochoa, ready to see to the work Leonard needed done.

He followed the man into his office for the first procedure, feeling Jim's eyes bore holes in the back of his head as he went and resisting, with every fiber of his being, the outright need to turn and look back.


	3. December 2286

****

December 2286

In the weeks after the encounter in _Excelsior_ 's sickbay, Leonard spent solid hours kicking himself for not stealing that last glance.

Joanna was worried - she outright ordered him to come and spend Thanksgiving on Proxima with her, and her _terribly_ convincing argument ("Mom's coming, too, come on! You two can fight over the yams just like old times!") almost convinced him, but then Leonard considered boarding a shuttle alone, leaving Jim behind to battle whatever demons there were on this planet all by himself.

Not that Leonard had done much for him, not that the Fleet would let him.

So he declined Joanna's offer, and Winona's Christmas invitation when it came, and let the well-meaning calls and cards from shipmates and colleagues go unanswered as the days turned to weeks and the weeks to months, until Leonard was sure that worse than the not knowing was the knowing - knowing that Jim was somewhere nearby, somewhere on the same planet, and no one was sitting in his chair or reading his paper or calling Leonard old and telling him to work less.

He grabbed up all the shifts he could, working nights and weekends in the ER at l'Université Médecine. He didn't even realize he was doing it until he came home one night, soap still fresh under his nails from a surgery, a patient he had just barely saved, and Christopher Pike was sitting on his crowded stoop.

The sense of déjà vu was almost overwhelming, and Leonard gripped at the railing of his stairs so tightly he could feel his knuckles whiten.

"Leonard--"

"Where's Jim?"

"Let's go inside."

It was uncanny, like they had rehearsed this dialogue. Leonard nodded mutely (he'd stopped raising his shoulder in affirmation after two months, he decided to call that a win no matter how hard-won it was) and unlocked the door.

Inside he kicked off his boots and padded up the stairs in his socks, making a bee-line for the liquor cabinet. Pike followed, unsteady on his leg as always, taking more time on the stairs than Leonard.

"Do I need whiskey for this news?" McCoy asked as Pike entered the room.

"Probably," Pike said, sitting gently on the over-stuffed sofa Jim had insisted on, the one with a thousand throw pillows that somehow always end up scattered across the room no matter what Leonard did with them.

He poured himself a whiskey, neat, and thought about letting Pike sit thirsty. But even from the grave, Leonard feared his mother's wrath at ungentlemanly behavior, so he glanced over his shoulder.

"You?"

"You have gin?"

Leonard rummaged in the bottles, coming up with a bottle of gin of indeterminate age - he never drank the stuff, so lord only knew when Jim bought it. He decided that if anyone deserved possibly-terrible gin, it was this harbinger of ill fortune that couldn't seem to stay off his doorstep.

"Yes, how do you take it?"

"With tonic, please."

Leonard mixed the drink, taking no precautions to make it palatable. He knew he was being shifty, a poor host, but the last time Pike paid a visit was when Jim went missing, and the last time they had anything remotely approaching a social call (nearly a year ago now, how the time had crept by when he was living it, how it flew in retrospect) was when Pike had drafted him back into the damned service (and goodness knows he'd had a hard enough time trying to get out of it once the mission was over - it seemed like they were holding on just in case they needed him, and Leonard resented being made to feel like a prize to be won) so he thought that even the specter of his mother would forgive the rudeness. She had loved Jim like a second son, and Leonard was relatively positive she would have at least spit in Pike's drink.

He refrained from doing so, not least of all because Pike was watching, and handed the older man his rocks glass, clear liquid still swirling from the stirrer, a tiny vortex.

"Is it good news, this time?" Leonard asked, when he couldn't stand to watch Pike sit and sip his drink any longer.

"How do we define good?" Pike countered, but held up a hand before Leonard could bite out a retort. "No need to tell me to get to the point. Jim-" he took a shuddering breath, and Leonard felt bad about the terrible drink - he knew that Jim meant nearly as much to Pike as he did to Leonard himself. "Jim is, as always, a remarkably stubborn man."

Leonard almost resisted rolling his eyes, but Pike caught the tail-end of the movement. "I know," he sighed. "I told them this would happen."

"And what," Leonard sipped his whiskey, trying not to snap and yell, "is happening, exactly?"

"Jim won't break," Pike said, and the words sat between them for a long moment, taking all the air that Leonard needed to breathe.

"So he still thinks he's Jamith."

Pike nodded. "He thinks he's Jamith, and he's convinced that we're all delusions. He won't break, and I'm afraid that if the Fleet keeps going the way they do, he'll- well-"

"Die," Leonard supplied, little lead weights piling in his stomach.

"No," Pike countered, "I'm afraid he'll actually _break_ \- go catatonic, hurt someone, something that we can't get him back from."

Leonard barked out a bitter laugh, the sound sour on his tongue. "You can't get him back and you're afraid you never will," he said, and he could feel the hysteria mounting - the uncertainty and the secrecy and the fear and the long hours starting to gang up on him, the last two years of stress crashing down like a wave around him, washing away what was left of his meager self-control.

Pike sighed. "I have no right to ask you for anything," he began, and Leonard knew what was coming. "But I have to. We need you to try."

"Me?" The laughter wouldn't stop, and Leonard was suddenly afraid that he was the one who had broken, that he and Jim would be reunited in an asylum somewhere, laughing and staring their way into old age, together but too far gone to know why that mattered.

"In your report, you mentioned that Jim talked about having dreams about you."

"Yeah," Leonard snorted, "right before I abducted him."

"Look, do you know how desperate we are, McCoy? We- _I_ want Jim back, and _I_ think he'll respond to you because, under all the damage and the broken and the fear, he still loves you. We just want you to have him here, in the house, for a week. If he doesn't respond, we'll leave you alone after that, okay?"

Leonard shook his head. "I can't."

"Why?"

"Because for the past two years, all I've wanted was for you to say he was coming home to me. And now you want to give me this- his empty shell, and you want me to let him wear Jim's clothes and sleep in Jim's bed and we'll all pretend he's Jim when we all know he's anything but and it will _break my heart_ , Pike, so you can fucking forget it."

Pike nodded and stood to leave. "Sorry I bothered you."

Leonard watched his commanding officer make his way to the stairs, anger and hope and fear and frustration warring for dominance in his chest. Pike made it three steps down, leaning heavily on the railing as he went, before McCoy called out to him.

"What's today?"

"Saturday," Pike offered, pausing but not turning.

"Give me a few days to get ready. Bring him by on Wednesday."

Pike looked over his shoulder, studying McCoy's face for any small crack. "You're sure?"

"No," McCoy laughed again. "I'm not sure at all. But bring him by on Wednesday, and we'll see if I can - if he even wants to see me."

"Thank you," Pike said, more emotion in his eyes than Leonard had ever seen before.

"One week," he said, trying to look stern.

"One week," Pike agreed, and took another halting step down the stairs. "That means he'll be here over Christmas. Is that okay?"

McCoy laughed. "No, none of this is okay. I'll survive."

"See you Wednesday," Pike smiled, his eyes kind. "And thank you."

Leonard didn't look up, he just listened to Pike make his way down the stairs, not bothering to get up and offer help, though he knew he should. When he heard the front door slam shut, Leonard let out a breath he barely knew he was holding.

* * *

The man who was cruel visited Jamith (or was it Jim or James or Kirk) for the second time that day, eyes light blue like a lie about a cloudy day.

"Hello, Jim," he said, and Jamith hated himself for whimpering, even if it was only an inward noise. This man was cruel and awful and Jamith hated him and his quiet voice and his smile and his goddamn lies.

"No words today?" the man asked. Jamith blinked as quickly as he could, but didn't trust his tongue - it tended to betray him into their language when he didn't watch it. Sometimes he wondered, vacantly, if he babbled in the real world, if a jumble of syllables fell into Nurse Latt's lap back in the hospital.

"That's okay," he man said, his tone disingenuously kind. Jamith didn't want to fall into it, but he did, he always did because it would be easy to believe that he was the man they showed him, that he was James Kirk, brave and handsome starship captain. (Except James Kirk seemed more foolish than brave, and too pale to be handsome.) Still, he fought. He clung to the beliefs that he was a protector of Thandum, like Latt had shown him, medals and memories laid in black and white and gold on the ground.

"You're going to see someone today, Jim, an old friend of mine, and of yours. His name is McCoy."

McCoy sounded familiar, Jamith remembered seeing someone called that on the ship that brought him to this planet, with its ugly skies and suffocating buildings. He remembered the man as looking like his doctor, his Ossa, and disappearing into a room with another man, and coming out looking completely wrong a few hours later. Jamith didn't want to see that man, the man who could change his skin like a snake, but he didn't suppose he had a choice. Either he went and walked like the dignified soldier he was, or he fought and they would drag him like a child.

So he stood and followed the cruel man, both walking slowly from their injuries.

The outside was still a challenge- it was easier on this alien planet than on Kythar, becuase the sky was wrong, but still, the cruel man took him to an underground garage to get into one of the transports that on Kythar were called something else, but here they were called flitters. And he tinted the windows a few shades less than opaque, letting the ghosts of the city race by them, buildings and people and other vehicles. Jamith only spoke once, his eyes going narrow as he pointed to what looked to him like a tangle of trees rising over the skyline.

"I know that place," he said, his too-pink finger pressing solidly against the glass, going red at the tip in a familiar way. He cruel man nodded.

"Do you know what it's called?"

"No," Jamith said, still studying the shadowy structure as it began to fade into the distance. "The Awful Tower," he offered, the words surprising him more than anything else - he barely knew where they came from, let along what had driven him to say them.

His companion looked pained for a moment, his nostrils flaring in a way that humans thought was so subtle. "Nearly so, Jim," he said.

They rode the rest of the way in silence, Jamith (or maybe it was Jim, a man who knew about towers in this city) still trying to find the place where that outburst had come from.

The flitter pulled up to the curb in front of building, the facade of which was utterly crammed with windows that would let the sky in, too much sky. Jamith imagined the inside in the morning, sunlight streaming through the windows on the top floor as he lay in bed, his skin warm on the crisp linen sheets. There was more there, it's more a memory than a fantasy, but he choked it off before it could gain purchase. The delusions were dangerous like that - they made Jamith feel like he was home, like things were right and well, when they were anything but.

There were men outside, and Jamith decided they were probably the same men he had seen where they were keeping him, the men who looked edgy and touched their sidearms every time Jamith made a move they didn't expect. They would be watching now, waiting for him to make a break for it, waiting for him to try anything as if he could move under all that empty.

"We have to take a few steps outside," the cruel man said, "just to get up those stairs. Are you okay with that?"

Jamith wasn't, not even a little, but he nodded because he was a soldier. If he could face enemies on the battlefield, he could climb stairs. Still, he accepted the dark glasses the cruel man handed him, and let himself be led from the car with his eyes closed.

"This is Leonard's home," the man said, "you used to live here, too. Do you remember?"

Jamith shook his head in negative, the way these people did, but he did remember, just a little, the way the cobblestones feel under his feet. But the air was wrong, so open and echoing like the call of a wild beast, and Jamith was scared, frightened to take the steps. He froze his eyes snapping shut in panic, and heard the cruel man curse under his breath and say words.

Jamith held out a hand toward the approaching shapes, the guards coming at the cruel man's request.

"How many steps?" he grunted, and the cruel man - the man who was forcing him to do this, but Jamith would do it of his own power, he would do it himself, goddamn it - took a deep breath.

"Two to the stoop, three up the steps, and then we're in."

Jamith nodded, swallowed and willed his feet to move.

"Jim," the cruel man said, his voice a soft trap, "do you want someone to carry you?"

Jamith summoned all his energy, all the power he held in his body and growled his disapproval. The cruel man was quiet, and for a long moment is the echoy street, no one moved.

"I-" Jamith gritted out, propelling himself forward with the power of his words, "Am." He was at the bottom of the stairs, felt them bump his ankles, and so he willed his foot to lift again. "Stronger. Than. You." In retrospect, Jamith didn't know who he was speaking to, if it was the delusion, the sky, or his own fear, but what mattered is that the door in front of him was open, and he could walk through it of his own volition.

The man who stood on the other side of the door was the man Jamith remembered from the ship, the man who wasn't Ossa, and he regarded them both seriously for a moment.

"Pike," he said, and Jamith remembered for the first time in a month that the cruel man had a name. The door clicked shut behind them and Jamith slowly took the glasses they had given him off, blinking in the harsh light of the landing.

"McCoy."

"Wednesday already?"

Jamith watched them talk, his brain feeling a little waterlogged, like he was hearing things, seeing things, from the bottom of a lake, like he just had the barest bits of light filter down to him, and he had to make sense of it anyway.

Both men looked at him, and he realized that it was his turn to greet the man, so he summoned all his warrior's courage and stepped forward. "I believe we have met," he said, baring his neck to the man. "I believe you were called Ossa then."

The strange man smiled and offered his hand, which Jamith took firmly. It was how these people showed greeting, he knew, because the cruel man had tried to get him to take his hand more than once.

The man who was not Ossa smiled. "I was. But my name is really Leonard McCoy. You used to call me Bones."

Something fired in Jamith, and again without knowing why, he nodded. "I may throw up on you," he said, and the man seemed to turn pale.

"I think you'll be pretty safe here," McCoy offered, and Jamith wasn't sure why that was the right answer, but it was. "Would you like to see the upstairs?"

Jamith nodded, and followed McCoy - Bones - up the stairs (which were surrounded by green walls, familiar green walls, like something from a memory of a dream) and into the house proper.

Walking between the photos on the walls, the smiling people, trailing after the cruel man and McCoy, was like walking in an echo. The walls seemed blurry somehow, the art seemed dim and subdued, even the air felt old somehow, though Jamith was hard-pressed to explain how or why.

They'd made it as far as the living room at the top of the stairs when things suddenly took a turn for the worse; the couch seemed normal enough, the armchairs and table and viewscreen, but in the corner, sitting lonely on a table against the wall, there was a small bush. It was spiky, kind of rough tendrils popping up from the center, each with a thick mane of slender leaves. The smell hit Jamith when he was a few paces away from it; something rich and woody and tangy. He could barely help himself, he reached out and stole a leaf, placing it his mouth to chew.

"What is this?" Jamith asked, the taste, rich like the smell, dancing on his tongue.

"Rosemary," Leonard said, "You- Sulu grew it, gave you a cutting for your birthday two years ago."

Jamith swallowed the leaf and the strange name together. _Sulu_ seemed familiar, but not in the way _Bones_ did. "It's mine?"

Bones smiled and took a tentative step into Jamith's personal space. "Yes," he said, laying his hand on the small leaves almost reverently. "It's yours. You like to cook with it, make chicken and potatoes because they're my favorites. It's - I've been taking care of the bush. It was small when you left here, barely more than a sprig. Saturday is Christmas, Jim, you know, and it always snows on Christmas, so I brought it in while the weather gets cold, thought I'd save it for you."

Jamith touched the woody stalk again, his fingers brushing the skin of McCoy's hand, soft and strong at the same time, wishing that he could remember the things this man talked about; wishing he knew how to cook foods that had this plant in them, wishing he could give this man what he seemed to need.

He snatched his hand back. This was dangerous. This was bad. This was the kind of thinking that led to living in the delusions, led to never waking up in the hospital and never being normal again.

"I want to go home," Jamith said, turning to meet the cruel man's gray eyes.

"No," the man said. "You need to stay here."

"Why?"

This time, Bones answered, his voice still quite and clouded with emotions. "Because Admiral Dipshit over there thinks staying here will cure you."

"McCoy-" the man growled, a note of warning in his voice.

"No, Chris, come on. This is _Jim_ and he's fucking smart enough to figure it out." McCoy reached out to touch Jamith's face lightly, and Jamith was torn between wrenching back and leaning in, so he did neither, frozen to the spot.

"You are James Tiberius Kirk," Bones said, his green-brown-gold (was there a word for that color?) eyes flashing. "I know you don't believe me. I know you think this is a delusion and you'll wake up in the hospital on Kythar any moment now, this delusion melted away. But it won't. Jim, this is real. And Kythar is real. You are a human man who crashed there and they don't know about humans. Stay here, with me, for a week. You don't have to touch me or talk to me or even be in the same room as me. But this is your home, and this is where you should be."

Much to his own surprise, Jamith didn't hit McCoy or make a break for the door or even try to get away. There was something in the other man's eyes, something earnest and raw in his voice, something _familiar_ about the house and the rosemary and the smell that he thought he had forgotten rising off of Bones' skin.

"A week," he said, when he found his voice.

"Seven days," McCoy agreed. "Next Wednesday, if you still don't want to, you don't have to stay."

"I don't trust you."

"I'm not asking you to. There will be security outside, and they can come in anytime you want. I'll have them stand guard over both of us, if you need it."

"Where will I sleep?"

"There's a bed upstairs."

"Where will _you_ sleep?"

"Couch."

"Do you love me?" Jamith was sure he knew the answer, because the feeling in his chest was love, and he knew he and this man had shared something, something huge.

McCoy seemed thrown off balance by the question. He swallowed once, twice, three times, and still spoke with a cracking voice. "No. I love Jim, but I don't think I love who you are now."

Jamith nodded. So this man knew enough to know that, no matter who he looked like, no matter what the beliefs of this "Starfleet" might be, he was not, at the moment, James Kirk. That was good. He could work with that little bit of doubt, he could nurture it into freedom.

Jamith waited for more questions to come from McCoy before turning to the cruel man. "When will you be back?"

He smiled. "I'll come visit on Sunday, if you have no objections, and then to collect you on Wednesday, if you want to leave."

"Alright," Jamith said. "I can stay for seven days." He would have to be careful, because this place, the space McCoy inhabited, it was a mess of pitfalls and traps for Jamith, beginning with the heavily curtained windows that barely kept the outside in check. Still, he thought, if he could navigate it without the cruel man watching, if he could convince poor softhearted McCoy that he didn't belong here, then there was a chance.

The cruel man was saying something about having bags sent, clothing and toiletries, but Jamith wasn't listening. Finally Jamith's former jailer smiled, shook his new warden's hand, and said "Merry Christmas, Leonard," before hobbling down the stairs and out into the street.

Jamith and McCoy were left staring at each other until Bones broke, a shy smile creeping across his face. "Lunch?" he asked, gesturing to the kitchen.

Jamith raised his shoulder in the affirmative.

* * *

Leonard hated sleeping alone, but over the past two years, he'd gotten used to it. Jim had never been great at sharing, tending to steal covers and pillows and, once or twice when his dreams were bad, Leonard's arms.

But over time, Leonard had gotten used to not being kicked, to sprawling out, to sleeping alone.

What he was not used to, however, was sleeping on the fucking couch.

It was just after midnight, the third night Jim had been at the house, and Leonard was beginning to regret ever letting his partner talk him into buying the torture chamber he called a sofa. He was stuck staring at the ceiling, reliving the awkward moments of the day over and over in his mind.

The previous days had been alright, if not great. Slowly Jim had begun asking questions, and Leonard was able to answer most of them; when they had started dating, when they had moved to Paris, what they were like as a couple, who their friends were. Those were easy questions. There were harder ones, too, about Jim's life and his family and his career. Things that, even after half a lifetime together, Leonard wasn't altogether sure how to answer in a way that would do justice to _Jim_.

And then, over lunch on the third Jim had asked why Leonard didn't wear a ring and while the answer had seemed simple in his head - "We're not married, we have no intention of getting married, and I didn't need a piece of paper and a band of metal to know that you loved me." - Jim's reaction made Leonard think that he had said the wrong thing.

Jim had shut down, staring at his own hands and the scuffed wood of the kitchen table until Leonard finally stood and cleared the dishes.

"What do you want to do now?" Jim asked, and Leonard thought that this man had no hope, no Earthly chance, of being his partner, not when he sounded like a little lost child.

"I-" Leonard choked on the word, or maybe the idea of spending more time with this man who wasn't the man he should be. "I have some cases to review. I'm- you know what I do?"

The man who Leonard had been so sure wasn't his Jim smiled his Jim's smile and said, "You're a doctor, dammit, not a brick layer," and looked surprised that he had conjured that up, just like he had looked shocked when they met in the hallway on the first day, when he promised not to throw up on Leonard.

"Yeah," Leonard agreed, "Doctor. I have to review some cases. You can read, if you want, or watch tridee, or just stare at the walls."

Jim-but-not-Jim nodded, and Leonard felt a surge of internal joy that he was using human body language, even if it wasn't conscious. "I think - can I see the books?"

Just the fact that he asked for books and not a PADD was encouraging, and Leonard wished he had something impressive to show Jim, some kind of Disney scene where he opened a door to a vast, unused library and gave it to him, because that kind of thing worked in the movies. But he didn't - he just had the shelf Jim kept in the office, dusty now from disuse, around 50 books stacked in some kind of ineffable order.

Even though he wasn't Jim, the man at Leonard's side still touched the spines of the ink-and-paper relics like they were sacred, the same way the real Jim did.

"These are just the reading books," Leonard said, smiling at the cracks in the binding, the folded down pages - some of these books had been Tiberius', before he died, and Jim had told him more than once about taking them to bed and reading them under the cover, old pulpy copies of _Have Spacesuit, Will Travel_ and _The Tempest_.

"There are more, you know, at your - at _Jim's_ office. Those are hard covers, first editions, some of them. You're - he's kinda a collector."

Jim nodded. "Which is his favorite?"

"I don't think he has one," Leonard said. "I don't think he could ever choose."

They stood in front of the bookshelf for nearly half an hour, Jim asking questions about each tattered volume, and Leonard answering as best he could. Finally, Leonard gave up, sitting at his desk and pulling a PADD out while Jim continued to pull out book after book, reading a page here or a chapter there, until he was surrounded by a kind of wall, some kind of sorting system that was reminiscent of the old and yet entirely different.

They spent a good few hours that way, in the study, and for the time being, Leonard was able to forget that this wasn't Jim, that this wasn't his partner, that the man sitting at the table behind a phalanx of books was a stranger.

Things actually seemed normal over dinner - Jim stayed away from the topic of _them_ , opting instead to ask about his family. Leonard had the feeling that Jim already knew most of it; that he had at least been told about George and Sam's deaths, if only because that was the kind of thing Pike would do. Pike, for all his well meaning, never really understood Jim's relationship with his family, never got why the young man had shied away from all associations with his father. So Leonard figured that Jim was just checking the facts, just gauging trustworthiness.

It was after dinner that things began to get strange. Well, things began to get more strange than hosting your partner of twenty-three years in his own home that he couldn't remember.

In any case, Leonard had opted to watch the news, to turn on the tridee and try, at least, to get his mind off the day. And it was going well - a fluff piece about kittens that needed adopting, something about Vulcan immigration policies, the usual nonsense of the evening news. Even the commercials were standard, selling the same junk they always sold - shrink your brow ridge, buy this sugar for your kids - but then the recruitment piece came on.

Starfleet had done well in rebuilding its corps in the thirty years since the Battle of Vulcan. It wasn't to the same strength it had been, but that was only because not everyone was suited to being an officer, and some things took time. There had been steady growth, both in enlistments and the building and development of new ships.

But they still ran ads, and they still started the same way. A silhouetted figure stood against the blue field of the Federation flag, as a voice intoned, solemnly, Jonathan Archer's famous words. "Space: The Final Frontier."

Except the voice they used, the voice every person on the planet who watched the goddamn news had become completely desensitized to, was fucking _Jim_.

Leonard went stiff, his whole body locking up, waiting for Jim to react. When the commercial ended, he finally managed to will his neck to move enough to glance over to his left, to the armchair Jim had settled in.

He had gone white as a sheet, his eyes standing out as the only sparks of color in his otherwise bloodless face. "Was that-" his voice was a croak. "That was me, right? You heard that?"

Leonard nodded. "I- I forgot they used that. I've just heard it so many-"

Jim took a shuddering breath. "Okay, Bones, listen. I have been told for the last eighteen months that I am crazy, fucking delusional, making up places and people in my brain that don't exist because my brain is all wrong inside. Right?"

Leonard nodded, but said nothing.

"Okay, so then you come into my life and you- you _steal_ me away and make me look different and take me to a place where I'm famous or something, and you want me to _accept_ that is is normal?"

"I--"

"This isn't normal. I'm not- I'm not a captain and I'm not James Kirk. I am _Jamith_ , and I am _scared_ because this _isn't real_. And you're a very nice man, or at least really good at pretending to be, and I'm sure you deserve something, but it's not _me_."

The tears were steaming down Jim's face, terror and confusion and something that Leonard didn't recognize warring for dominance in his voice. It was all Leonard could do not to hug Jim, not to take him in his arms and hold him close, let him cry himself out because it was confusing and it was scary and no one could fix it for him.

"I know, Ji- Jamith. I understand, I do. Please. I-" he breathed deeply. "I said before that this is real, and so was Kythar. And I know it seems insane, you thought that even before all this, even when you were the- when you were him, that it was so weird that people looked up to you, idolized you, made you the poster boy of a military organization. You - he- fuck it, you didn't let them make you an admiral for _years_ , because you didn't think you deserve it. I had to beg you to come live on Earth, to stay here with me, because-"

"Because I belong in the stars, Bones."

The sentence hung heavy in the air.

"Yeah," Leonard said, finally, reminding himself to breathe. "That's what you said. And you keep doing that, remembering little things like that, and you still think this isn't _real_? It's real to me, and I have lived two years without the man I love, so if you could let him come back now, I'd really- I miss him."

Jim sat still for a moment, finding something of great interest on his hands to stare at. Finally, the tension in the air reached it's crescendo, and he stood.

"I think I should go to bed. Do you need anything from upstairs before I go?"

Leonard shook his head. He had prepared for this, or he thought he had, and had clothes stashed away in the living room. Jim nodded in return and started for the stairs, but paused with his hand on the rail and his foot on the step.

"Bo- Leonard," he said, a tenderness in his voice. "I don't know what's true, and I don't know why this is happening, but I'm sorry that you don't have," he gestured to the TV, "him.He's not me, but I hope you find him, anyway."

Leonard closed his eyes and took a breath that felt like breathing sandpaper into his throat. "Thanks," he said, because he didn't trust his voice to do anything more.

Jim made a noise, a kind of non-committal grunt, and started up the stairs in silence. Leonard listened to him go, sighing heavily. Jim paused at the top of the stairs, and in a voice so soft that Leonard almost missed it, he sent words tripping down the stairs; "Maybe a ring would have been a clue, Bones."

Leonard had no answer to that, and the closing of the bedroom door as Jim stepped though was heavy in his ears.

* * *

Morning came, as it was wont to do, and the light cast by the rising sun splashed across Leonard's face where he lay on the couch.

He had been foolishly optimistic last night, he had let his heart get the better of him; he had hoped, or maybe expected, that Jim was secretly still Jim, and all it would take was a few books and a meal and he would have his partner back.

Leonard sighed to himself, pulling the workout clothes he had stashed in the living room, and heading to the bathroom. He changed, grabbed a protein bar and filled his bottle with water, and left for his run.

He'd forgotten, in the flurry of the past few days, that today was Christmas, and Leonard was surprised, somehow, to step out into a city dusted with snow, and more thick flakes falling from the sky. It was a silly thing, the Christmas snow, but the weather control did it every year, and Leonard thought that, having lived with it for as long as he had been in Paris, he would miss the snow if they took it away from him.

He took the long route, through the Jardain des Plantes and back, stopping for crepes at the little stand. He figured that even if Jim wasn't awake yet, he might enjoy a treat for Christmas breakfast.

Jim was awake when Leonard returned, the sweat dry on his body, and sitting in the living room with a PADD on his knee. The sight was so familiar, so _domestic_ , that Leonard thought that maybe Jim-but-not-Jim was staging it, making it seem like he was the man they said.

"Hi," Jim said, not glancing up from the PADD. "Where were you?"

"I went- I like to run in the morning," Leonard told him, fidgeting in his workout clothes. "I got you crepes."

"Is that food?," Jim said, taking the bag Leonard offered.

"Yeah, it is. I'm gonna take a shower, get dressed. You good?"

Jim nodded.

When Leonard returned, fifteen minutes later, damp spots still standing out on the threadbare Ole Miss t-shirt he'd grabbed, Jim was in the same position. The only thing that had changed was the smudge of chocolate on his lip, and Leonard knew it was a bad idea to lean in and lick it off, because this _wasn't_ Jim and he had to remember that, but there was a mighty temptation.

"What are you reading?" Leonard asked, and Jim jumped, like he hadn't heard McCoy on the stairs.

"Uhh," Jim looked up, "Well, the comm went off, and I was trying to silence it, but I answered it."

Leonard felt his heart leap into his throat, but he wasn't sure why. "Okay?"

"And it was, well, Winona? My- er- his mother?"

Leonard just nodded, relieved that this wasn't some horrible thing, and disappointed at himself for not remembering that Winona had promised to call, not warning Jim. Jim and Winona had never had the easiest of relationships, but they tried to get along, and these days they mostly succeeded. "How was it?"

"It was weird," Jim said. "She- there were these pictures, of the man and the woman they said were my parents, in this hospital. But I didn't remember them, didn't know who they were. Winona- looking at her felt like something."

Leonard resisted the urge to be petty, to ask if Jim felt that same _something_ when they looked at each other. "Did you have a nice chat?"

Jim smiled. "We did. It was like - sometimes, when I'm talking to you, I say things, and I later, I couldn't tell you why. Like the throwing up thing. But with Winona, I mean - sometimes I wasn't sure why I said something but I was always sure what it _meant_ \- like she mentioned Frank, and I knew that was a negative thing, and she mentioned Sam and I was sad. I wasn't sure who Sam was, exactly, but I knew what to feel, you know?"

Leonard shook his head. "Not even a little, but I'm glad she helped."

"She told me that Jim kept a journal, an old ink-and-paper one, so I looked for it. Took me a bit to find it, but it opened for my fingerprint and, well. That's what I'm reading."

"Oh." Leonard had known about the journal, but he had never had the skill to crack the biolock, and in the last two years he'd never quite built up the lack of shame he would need to ask someone else for help. "Anything I should know?"

Jim shrugged. "I- uh- well. I think I might - look, if this is a fake, or something that you made, or the cruel man or Winona, then you based it off of me. And if this is something my crazy mind made up-" he sighed. "In the hospital, sometimes, things didn't add up. Like I never spoke Kytharn half as well as I speak Standard, and this body, without the ridges and the missing fingers - it feels more whole."

Leonard didn't want to show emotion, not to this man, and not for the grudging bit of whatever that he was giving, so he swallowed around the lump in his throat, waiting for Jim to finish.

"So I figure, maybe this is a dream. Maybe I am crazy, and I should be fighting for the right to live a life uninhibited by all the things that are wrong here, the too-perfect things that I know I don't deserve. But maybe it feels right."

"If I tell you this is real," Leonard sighed, "will you believe me?"

Jim shook his head. "No."

Leonard nodded and sunk onto the couch next to Jim. "Can I sit here?"

"Yeah," Jim said, studying him for a long moment, before turning back to the PADD.

Leonard didn't put his head on Jim's shoulder, but he felt, for the first time since he had seen him in the hospital on Kythar, that having hope wasn't the most foolish thing he had done this day.

* * *

Christopher Pike did not want to admit how tired he was; not to his friends, not to his superiors, and not to himself.

He hated what things were like at work, hated having to cajole and beg Jim into being _Jim_ again, and listening to Leonard whine about how much it _hurt_ and dealing with all the people who needed his attention. Chris had lived through a nice, long career in the Fleet, but he honestly thought that this situation with Jim was going to kill him.

A week after the last time he had been there, Chris found himself again staring at the red bricks and white door of Jim and Leonard's home. Leonard had send a report on Christmas, saying that things were going well and not to interrupt, so Pike had forgone the Sunday visit in favor of letting things progress.

His hand hovering over the bell, Chris briefly considered turning and walking away, getting back in his flitter and going home to pretend that this wasn't happening to him, that Jim wasn't broken anymore. It would be easy, he knew, to turn on his heel and march off, letting Kirk and McCoy stay cloistered in their row house, working out the things that needed working out.

And yet he pressed the buzzer solidly, smiling into the camera he knew Jim or Leonard would be using to check his identity.

The lock clicked open after a moment, and Chris pulled the door, staring forlornly at the stairs in front of him. All the years since the Narada incident, and he still walked with the limp. He hated these fucking stairs, hated that it took him a year and a half to climb them, hated how Leonard pretended not to notice how slowly hobbled up them. Hated how Jim wasn't there to bound up, two at a time, and stand at the top, sunny smile taunting Chris, words like, "Come on, old man, you're going to miss the football match!" floating down, hated that there wasn't laughter and camaraderie on these stairs anymore.

When he reached the top, still hating every goddamn run and rise that he had to drag his bum leg across, Chris was shocked - and a little pleased - to find Jim on the couch, tapping notes into a PADD quietly.

"Hello," Chris offered, and Jim smiled up at him.

"Hello," he said, and if it wasn't warm, if the smile didn't reach his eyes, well. Chris figured there would be consequences to being the one who handled Jim's reintegration. He figured it would damage their relationship to an extent, but he just couldn't trust the normal crews, the men who didn't even know Jim, to do it for him. Chris was not a perfect man; he made mistakes and took wrong steps and sometimes he still wondered if he was behind glass on Talos IV. But he knew Jim Kirk well enough to know that Jim resisted authority with every fiber of his being, and that he had to be handled carefully. Chris knew how to keep the kid gloves on, and still get the results he needed, by bringing in the thing - the person - Jim wanted most.

"I take it you remember me," Chris said, and Jim gave him a look that was so reminiscent of their first meeting that Chris's heart broke a little.

"Hello, Admiral Pike."

"Hi, Chris," Leonard joined, his voice coming from the kitchen door. "I was just cleaning up from lunch. Can I get you anything?"

Pike shook his head. "I'm here to check on your progress, you know. The usual."

"Right," Leonard stepped into the room, the dishtowel still grasped in his hands. "Um. How do we-"

Jim set the PADD down next to him. "I'm not going to recite my times table like a grade school Vulcan," he sighed, and Chris' heart sang. Not only was it Jim's attitude, to a t, but he knew about Vulcans. It was such a step up from the angry trapped animal Chris had been dealing with that he thought he could cry.

Instead, he nodded. "Okay. Let's start with you telling me your name."

Jim stared at his palms for a long moment. Then, without looking up, he whispered, "I don't know."

"Can you elaborate?" Pike asked, not daring to hope.

"My name - I am a soldier and protector of Thandum, Jamith son of Gargund and Wincalle. But-- I think-- I've been so-- I might be James Kirk, too. Can I be both?"

From behind him, Chris heard Leonard make a little noise, and he held up a hand to try and stop him.

"Yes," Chris said, trying to keep his voice level. "You can be both. Can you tell me what made you think James might be you, too?"

"No," Jim said, shaking his head, and then went on, "Not really. I guess -- On Christmas I talked to Winona, and-- there were a lot of things wrong on Kythar, in the hospital. Like I had these totally real papers on my military service and my parents and my life, but no one seemed to be able to find me in the system. And there are things wrong, here, too, and I don't like it always, but-- it feels more, more, more..."

Jim stalled, and Pike had to fight down the urge to prompt him. This had to come from within, had to be Jim's decision.

"I remember, in the hospital," Jim was barely speaking, more of a whisper than anything else, "Before Ossa- Bones, before you got there, I was so sure, so positive that this was the right world. I tried to escape, did escape, and they kept giving me medication to control the delusions, kept bringing me back. The whole first year, I would escape and be caught and be medicated. Because I was dangerous. And when I did get out, when I was in the city, it felt _alien_ and wrong. Eventually I was afraid to go outside at all, because the world was _wrong_ , I knew it was. And, I do remember this place. The longer I spend here, the more I remember, and I never had that with Kythar, it never felt like a place I had lived. This- this is more like a home, I think."

Chris nodded. "Okay. I- I'm really glad you feel that way, Jim."

"Can I ask something?" Jim's eyes met Pike's, and Chris was floored by the amount of emotion Jim was able to throw into them, the raw power and sadness he felt behind them.

"Of course," Pike smiled, biting the ‘son' off the end of the sentence, because he didn't get to have that with Jim, not now, and maybe not ever again.

"I want to stay here," Jim said, sparing a glance for Leonard standing in the doorway. "If Bones will let me, if that's okay. I don't want to go back to the holding cell."

It wasn't a _holding cell_ , for fuck's sake, but Pike didn't bother to make the distinction between being in Fleet custody and being under arrest. He nodded, instead, and glanced at McCoy. "Have you and Dr. McCoy talked about it?"

"Yeah," McCoy offered, his voice sounding strained and alien, "we have. And he can stay, but I need the Fleet to cough up a spare bed. The couch isn't working for my back."

Pike nodded. "Alright, then, Jim, you can stay here. The guards will still be outside, and you'll still have to have the tracer on you, but you can stay."

Jim smiled, a real warm smile, and Pike felt like sunshine - he'd missed that smile in the last two years, missed the mischievous glint in the younger man's eye, the way his wrinkles seemed to be more like guidelines of joy.

"Leonard," Pike turned to look at him. "A word in the kitchen?"

McCoy nodded and headed back in, holding the door for Pike, which only annoyed him because it took him a while to get there, and he felt like he was putting McCoy out, standing there so long, though the doctor would never say so, of course.

When they were in the kitchen, door closed behind them and Jim surely listening at the door, Pike leaned in. "How is he, really?"

Leonard matched the quiet tone. "Every day he's a little more.. Jim," he said. "He's not there yet, and I don't know when he will be, but he's... better. He makes better eye contact, he laughs more. I just, I have to keep him away from Fleet stuff, the idea of going into space - he got kinda agoraphobic on Kythar, I said in my report - he's better now, with windows and yesterday we had breakfast with the curtains open, but he's not ready to go running or see Iowa. And space is out of the question, for a while at least. Maybe forever."

"He's going to hate that."

"Then he can work on it with a therapist - which he needs, by the way. I can't do it for him, I care too much," Leonard exhaled shakily. "I don't want to be his jailer and I don't want to be his doctor any more than I was before. I want to be his partner, and so you need to work out that whole benefits thing. Jim's given his life to the fucking Fleet, now it behooves you to give it back to him."

Chris nodded. He had to admit a grudging respect for Leonard. As much as he disapproved of the other man's outbursts and emotional spats, it was downright impressive how he held it together when it counted, and how selflessly he cared for the people around him - not least of all Jim.

"Anything else you need?"

McCoy shook his head. "No, just.. time. We need time."

"Okay," Pike said extending his hand to McCoy. "When can I come back and see you?"

"Get him a therapist, get his benefits and pension rolling in, and then we'll talk," McCoy took the offered hand. "And Chris, I-- thank you."

"For?"

"For getting him back."

"You did that."

"I-- Yeah, I was there and I did things, but you're the one who kept the search alive and never-- anyway, thanks, Chris. When he's Jim again, if he's Jim again, we need to have you and Number One over, to celebrate."

"We'd like that," Pike said, and abandoned the handshake to pull McCoy into an awkward, but totally sincere, hug.

The exited the kitchen together, and Jim grinned up at them from the couch, as innocent as Jim could look.

"Take care," Pike said, raising a hand in farewell, and Jim mimicked the movement.

"We will," he said and, God help him, Pike actually believed it.

* * *

Leonard hated leaving Jim in his state, but the ER was short-staffed on New Years eve, and he had been wheedled into a day shift while Jim was with Pike, seeing specialists and filling out paperwork. Pike had promised it would take a few hours, and that someone would stay with Jim when he was at home, because it was still a little difficult for him to be alone for more than the time Leonard took for his morning runs. (And what a new joy those had become, plotting new routes to show Jim one day, finding new cafes to get new flavors of coffee - he was relearning his city, all in the name of bringing it back to Jim, and it was a beautiful thing.)

He slumped in the front door around 1800, his back sore and his eyes tired. Leonard supposed that he was getting kind of old, he'd be 60 in the coming year, and maybe it was time to stop pulling 10-hour shifts like we was still an intern.

He stepped into the house, nodding to the security guard posted at the door as he went, and was immediately greeted by the sharp smell of rosemary, wafting down from the kitchen. His stomach flipped. That could only be a good thing, unless it was very, very bad.

He kicked off his shoes, hanging his keys on the hook next to Jim's and stuffing his coat into the closet, schooling himself to patience, before losing his grip on that and vaulting up the stairs, two at a time. So much for old.

Jim was in the kitchen, the security officer assigned to keep him company was on the couch in the living room, vaguely perusing a PADD. He looked up as Leonard entered, and shrugged. "About two hours ago, Admiral Kirk handed us a list and asked for groceries. He's been cooking ever since."

Leonard nodded. "Thanks, Shieh. I'm here now, you're relieved."

The tall man stood and took his leave of the situation. Leonard watched him go, doing his best not to call him back and run off to the hospital for the rest of his life. Somehow it seemed like dealing with infectious disease and bleeding people would be safer, right now, than dealing with Jim, and the idea that he was cooking.

Instead he took a deep breath, took a moment to still his mind, and stepped into the kitchen.

The smells were stronger in here, and the sight of Jim, puttering around the oven and pots on the stove was so homey that Leonard wanted to cry. Yes, he was favoring his bad hand and not moving as fleetly as he should, but he was Jim, and he was cooking.

"Hey," he said, and Jim jumped.

"Out!" Jim ordered, a stern finger pointing toward the door. "Shower. Dress. Dinner in fifteen."

Leonard laughed at the seeming return of Jim's command, and obeyed, climbing the stairs to the bedroom with a smile on his face.

* * *

When Leonard returned, twenty minutes later, to the small table that denoted the "dining room" in their home, Jim had laid the only table cloth they owned across it, and set out a veritable feast - chicken and potatoes and beans, cornbread and some kind of salad. It was almost exactly the meal Jim had made before he left on the fucking mission, the meal he made to soften the blow of his departure.

Jim was lighting the candles as Leonard came down the stairs, buttoning his cuffs as he did. "Looks great," Leonard said, and Jim turned to look at him, a large smile on his face.

"Thanks, so do you."

Leonard shifted uncomfortably. He wanted this to be normal, to be right, but there was something off in the presentation of it, something wrong in the flow.

"Jim," he sighed, "what is this all about? The food and all?"

"I wanted to do something nice for you," Jim said, "for helping me."

Leonard did his damnedest not to rub the bridge of his nose in frustration. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, I've been here for a week and a half, and I feel more at home, more normal than I have for a long time, and I wanted to share that with you."

Leonard nodded. "Okay, and, uh- what's your name?"

The smile faded from Jim's face. "I thought we agreed-"

"That you were both?" Leonard closed his eyes, because getting through this was hard enough without looking at Jim's face while he did it. "Yeah, we did, but before I sit down and have a candlelit dinner with you, before I let myself get swept the rest of the way into this fantasy, I need to know who you are. Because if you're not Jim, then I'm really sorry, I am, but I don't want this."

"Leonard," Jim's voice was soft in his ear, and when Leonard opened his eyes, he found himself looking point-blank into Jim's startlingly blue gaze. "I think-- I do remember loving you, Bones. Leonard. I remember it. And I- I miss it."

Leonard was opening his mouth to protest, lifting his arms to push Jim away, take a step back, something, he really was, but Jim's hand came up and rested softly on his cheek, and he leaned forward, brushing a kiss across Leonard's mouth, and it was all too much; Leonard leaned into this kiss, hungry for more than the food on the table, desperate for that unmistakable taste, the feel of _Jim_ that he had been missing for too long.

The kiss was long and sweet and sad, and Leonard put all the anger and longing he had felt over the past two years, all the feelings he could never name and the need that never went away into it, opening his mouth to allow Jim's tongue in, and kissing back with ferocity.

After what might have been the longest and most communicative kiss either man had ever had, Jim pulled back, resting his forehead against Leonard's.

"What," Leonard asked, "was that?"

"On Kythar they call it kissing, I think. I don't remember your Earth word."

"You're not funny, Jim. Are you Jim? Or are you Jamith?"

Jim closed his eyes, his breath warm on Leonard's face. "I don't know, I really and truly don't. But I know - I love you. I just- when I was in the hospital, I remembered you. You never left me, even when all I remembered was the way you smelled, you were always there. And I want you, I've wanted you so badly since I've been here. So if this is wrong, send me to stay with Winona or with Pike or Spock, I don't care, but I love you, Bones, I do, and I need you, and please, please don't say no."

"This is a big step-"

"Shut up, please. It's not like we've never fucked before. I remember, I do, the beach on Garmond and how you grumbled about the sand and the time we christened your desk at the hospital and were almost caught by that nurse, and the other times, the ones where it was just us in our bed, just you and me, and I need it, please. To feel normal."

Leonard knew he wasn't going to be able to deny Jim this, that he had already lost the battle, so he smiled softly, leaning in to press a kiss to the corner of Jim's mouth. "Say it again," he whispered, "the part about how you love me."

"With all my heart," Jim replied, his left hand squeezing Leonard's, because his right hand couldn't, not anymore. "I love you."

Leonard nodded and gripped back, pulling Jim up the stairs to their bedroom.

They fell into the walls as they went, hands grasping at clothing and mouths grasping for skin. It felt right, it really did, having Jim with him again, and by the time they reached the bedroom, they were both shirtless, Leonard having left a small pile of buttons somewhere in the hallway.

Jim pushed him onto the bed, as assertive and hot as ever, grinning his cocky half-smile, the one he should have abandoned when he was twenty-five, but still fit his face now as well as it had then.

"You're gorgeous," Leonard said, not even thinking before the words were out, and Jim laughed, climbing onto the bed next to him and propping himself on his right elbow, using his good hand to trace the pattern of hair on Leonard's chest, leaning in to lick and bite and nibble at bits of exposed skin.

"Also a damn fucking tease," Leonard laughed, gripping Jim's hips and rolling them over so he was on top, so their chests were pressed together, and their legs tangled, each man searching for friction, caught between too much fabric.

Leonard reached between them undoing the clasps his pants and pushing them down his legs.

"You know what I missed," he growled, stealing a kiss before slithering down Jim's body, pressing kisses to each nipple, licking along the indents of his ribs and coming to rest, his knees on the floor, between Jim's spread legs, where he busied himself depriving Jim of his pants and underwear.

"What?" Jim hissed, his hips canting up and his left hand grasping for something to help him attain nakedness faster.

Leonard grinned wickedly before licking a hot strip up Jim's thigh. "You," he whispered, "inside me," he licked again, up the other leg, and Jim's erection bobbed, teasing and red, glistening at the tip, "lettin' me ride you, beggin' for me, beggin' for more," he meant to keep going, to spin some kind of lyrical tale about the epic sex he intended to have, but he couldn't keep going, not with Jim, all of Jim, in front of him, and so he gave into the pressure and fit his mouth around the head of Jim's cock, sucking softly, and listening to the high-pitched whine that Jim always gave off in that moment.

"You want that, darlin'?" Leonard asked, before going back to the joyous job he had set himself, that of bringing Jim to incoherence by way of dick sucking. He knew his accent was getting thicker, the way it did when he was aroused, and he knew what that did to Jim, the way Leonard could get all southern, even after half a lifetime of living anywhere but Georgia.

"Yes," Jim panted, "Bones, please, I'm- I'm gonna-"

Leonard thought about pulling off, about demanding Jim wait until they were tangled together, until there was penetration and feelings and they could both come, together, but he didn't. He just kept bobbing his head, sneaking a knuckle up to press behind Jim's balls, to stimulate his prostate. He figured there would be time, while they prepped him, for Jim to recover. Because it had been a long time for both of them and they both deserved to forget the dinner getting cold downstairs, the candles burning into pools of wax on the tablecloth, and lose themselves in sensation.

When Jim came, Leonard swallowed with a smile, the kind of thing that two years ago he wasn't a fan of, but in the moment, he felt like he could never have enough of Jim, never get all that he wanted, the taste and the feel and all of it. He was so lost in the plans for what would come next that, as he pulled his mouth off Jim's dick with an obscene pop, it took him a minute to even notice that Jim was crying.

"Hey," Leonard was shocked, clambering up the bed to gather Jim in his arms, "hey. You alright? Jim?"

Jim let out a shuddering breath. "Yeah, I-" he sobbed, gently. "It's just - it's good crying, I think. I just, I- the whole time I was in that place, I missed you. I needed you, Bones, and I couldn't have you. But you're here, and you're real, and I'm real, and this is- I think- we're gonna be okay, right?"

Leonard smoothed down Jim's hair, feeling his partner's tears run down his chest, and willing himself not to join the crying. Lord knows it would do him good, but the moment wasn't about him, it was about Jim, so he swallowed his emotion, and sat on the bed he gets to share, again, gently petting Jim's hair, holding him tight and making soothing noises until the tears stopped.


	4. January 2288

****

January 2288

Jim stood at the door, water bottles in hand, waiting as Leonard finished tying his shoes.

"Ready?" he asked, and Jim nodded.

They set out into the streets of Paris, the early morning fog still lifting off the Seine as they ran across the bridge, trading barbs and laughing as they went.

Things had become more normal, Jim thought, whatever that was, as they turned left and followed the route Leonard liked, the one that led to the Champs Elysees. He'd been back at work for a month and people had stopped treating him like a security risk, had started treating him like _Jim_ most of the time. The road had been long and mostly uphill, but he thought that it was a good journey, all things considered.

Things weren't what they had been, but they never really would be again. He'd never have the full use of his arm back, and the pain in his joints some mornings was almost debilitating, but he was strong, and medicine was good, and if there was no cure, well, he could still live his days with Bones at his side.

There were nights, sometimes, the long nights, when he woke up and mistook the sounds of the city for the sounds of the hospital, heard people on the sidewalk and thought that it was Nurse Latt, with her measured steps and her kind eyes. He knew that, in the next few years, Kythar would reach warp technology and break into the galaxy, and maybe they'd meet again, Jim and Latt, maybe the Kytharn would see what they did and he would help them come to terms with it.

It wasn't all the way better, but it was close. And if Jamith still lived in a little part of his head, if sometimes he thought that this was all a fever dream, well, those times were getting to be further and further apart now, and Jim was getting to be the constant in his own head again.

He thought, idly, that this was how it should be, morning runs and afternoon comm chats and midnight sex, that while he loved the adventure, while there was glory and honor and fun in it, his real home was here, in the comfortable rut of a life well lived.


End file.
